Rendezvous of spaceships Gemini 7 and Gemini 6
Dec. 15, 1965 — Talk about making lemonade out of lemons. Gemini 6 was always planned to be a two-ship flight. The spacecraft, flown by Wally Schirra and Tom Stafford, would dock with a robot ship known as an Agena, which would be launched into space a day or so ahead of them. Agenas were finicky machines, however, and the one planned for Gemini 6 never reached orbit. As it happened, Frank Borman and Jim Lovell were already standing by to fly the next mission, Gemini 7, which would be a two-week endurance test of life in orbit. Why not send Borman and Lovell up ahead, and about the 11th or 12th day, when the tedium would be getting to them, send Schirra and Stafford up to try a rendezvous, if not a docking? That's just what happened. Never mind the three-mile rendezvous Vostoks 3 and 4 managed, Geminis 6 and 7 moved to within 12 inches of each other.